GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.—A Colorado man who spent 17 years in prison for a murder he did not commit is getting $1.2 million from the state under a law inspired by his ordeal.

Robert Dewey will be paid $100,000 a year for 17 years, minus taxes, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reported Wednesday ( http://tinyurl.com/kbucpg6).

A judge signed an order Aug. 28 authorizing compensation for Dewey after finding he was innocent.

Dewey was convicted in 1996 of murder and rape in the death of 19-year-old Jacie Taylor of Palisade, a small town in western Colorado about 15 miles east of Grand Junction.

At age 33, Dewey began serving a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

DNA technology available at the time of the trial gave jurors conflicting information, according to news accounts. The Colorado attorney general’s Justice Review Project took up Dewey’s case in 2011, and DNA tests with improved technology cleared him.

Dewey was released in in April 2012, when he was 51, but has been living in poverty. His ordeal attracted the attention of state lawmakers, and after hearing emotional testimony from Dewey, they passed a bill this year authorizing compensation in cases like his. Gov. John Hickenlooper signed it into law.

“Yeah, I’m (angry),” Dewey told lawmakers at a hearing in March. “But what good is that going to do?”

Dewey is believed to be the first person to be compensated under the act.

The Attorney General’s Office and the district attorney for Mesa County, where Dewey was convicted, proposed the award last month. A formula outlined by the law allows for compensation of up to $70,000 for each year served in prison, with payments capped at $100,000 a year.

The attorney general and the DA have denied wrongdoing or misconduct by investigators and prosecutors.

Authorities said the DNA tests that exonerated Dewey implicated another man, Douglas Thames, who is serving a life sentence for an unrelated slaying.

Prosecutors charged Thames with murder in Taylor’s death. He has pleaded not guilty.

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